21 April 2009

The 6th century historian Procopius of Caesarea (c. 500-565 CE) tells us that Queen Zenobia built the city on the Euphrates River (below) that even today is known by her name:

on the road to Roman territory, Zenobia, wife of Odenathus, who was ruler of the Saracens in that district, once founded a small city in earlier times and gave her name to it; for the name she gave it was Zenobia, as was fitting.*

If We Don't Act Now, The Waters Will Reach This Level.

No sooner had I written about the city of Zenobia on the Euphrates (Where Did Zenobia Die?) than I received an urgent appeal from Prof. Sylvie Blétry, chief of the French-Syrian Mission, who has been leading the excavations at Zenobia/Halebiye since 2006:

The city of Zenobia, which as Procopius says, was founded by the Queen of Palmyra and refortified by Justinian, is now in mortal danger from plans for a new dam on the Euphrates River. The French-Syrian Archaeological Mission is circulating a petition in the hope of saving this fascinating site. They do not seek to cancel the project (which is needed for the development of the region) but rather to have the dam moved so that it will not drown most of the city.

16 April 2009

My review of Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen, a new book by the Roman historian Pat Southern,* appears today in the Times Higher Education. Here's what I wrote:

Empress Zenobia: Palmyra's Rebel Queen

16 April 2009

I sometimes think that if it were not for her coins, Queen Zenobia would be taken as a legendary figure, at least as fanciful as Semiramis of Babylon, or Shirin, the Armenian princess who became the symbolic lady of Islamic mysticism. There may be a kernel of truth in the story, most would contend, but it would be considered a tale so fantastical, so gendered, with sources so unreliable that it simply couldn't have historical value. Yet Zenobia (c AD240-273) did exist and went to war against the Romans. And, as Empress of the East, she came within a hair's breadth of victory.

Pat Southern has written a scholarly biography of someone about whom almost nothing is known for certain. We don't know her year of birth, her lineage, when she married the great warrior prince Odenathus, or much about their children (she had one son at least, Waballath, who would become a short-lived Emperor of the East). More positively, I would note that we may have a real portrait of Zenobia - on her second Alexandrian coin issue. Although there is more information on her husband and his family, we don't know anything about how Odenathus became a great warrior, much less why the Emperor Gallienus appointed him Corrector Totius Orientis (if indeed he did) and gave him (or let him take) a slew of other prestigious titles. Odenathus appears on the Syrian scene almost as a deus ex machina, saving the day for Rome's eastern provinces and inadvertently setting in motion the forces that would destroy Zenobia and their city, Palmyra.

After Odenathus' murder, Zenobia seized the regency on behalf of Waballath, who was still a child. But of her later plans or intentions we are entirely ignorant. Southern admits this and concentrates instead on giving us a serious historical study of Palmyra, with few concessions to the romance of a beautiful queen leading her people against the power of Rome. Virtually every "fact" is disputed. Even Palmyra's incorporation into the Roman Empire floats over 200 years from Germanicus to Caracalla. Southern leans towards an early annexation (by Tiberius) - although Pliny the Elder remarks that Palmyra "had its own fate" between the Roman and Parthian empires. I prefer late, under Septimius Severus (AD193-211), which at least explains why Palmyra is ignored in Roman literary and epigraphic sources. Palmyra was a Roman ally, certainly, and maintained its own army - not just "desert fighters" but a heavily-armoured cavalry (clibanarii) adopted from the Persian enemy.

Southern tells Palmyra's history from the Roman side. A more easterly orientation might better fit the only Roman polis whose local language (Palmyrene Aramaic) is ubiquitous in public inscriptions. Palmyran men wore "Parthian" trousers (a pity the only man illustrated in this book is wrapped in a cloak; why not show the recently discovered mosaic of Odenathus on horseback, splendidly clothed in multicoloured Parthian style?). Vestis virum reddit: 'Clothes make the man'. Most Palmyran deities, too, faced eastwards: Bel, great god of the city, was originally Babylonian and his temple - still Palmyra's cynosure - was dedicated on Babylonian New Year's Day, 6 April AD32.

Palmyra's lifeblood was its commerce with India. Southern clearly traces the ups and downs of this crucial trade to the Euphrates (as the crow flies, over 200km of rough stony desert) and downriver to Charax, near modern Basra. Until Severus carved out Roman Mesopotamia, Palmyra played the middleman between rival empires. In the end, it was Rome that destroyed Palmyra. In AD272, Aurelian defeated Zenobia and restored Rome's rule of the east. Southern claims that Aurelian's reconquest displayed clementia, yet a favourable Roman source decries him as "a stern, a savage, and a bloodthirsty prince".

This book is not for the general reader, and even the serious traveller making a first visit to Palmyra is better advised to pack Richard Stoneman's accessible (if more romantic) Palmyra and its Empire: Zenobia's Revolt against Rome (1993) - although neither book includes much on the topography and monuments of Palmyra itself. Southern's version is a detailed evaluation of current Zenobian studies, taking robust stands on disputed points, such as the lack of evidence for 3rd-century city walls protecting Palmyra, a Roman strategy of blockade rather than siege, and Zenobia's ultimate fate. It doesn't settle many questions. How could it?

* Pat Southern has published nine books on the Roman army and on Roman history, including The Roman Army: A Social and Institutional History, The Roman Empire From Severus to Constantine, and The Roman Cavalry: From the First to the Third Century AD.

09 April 2009

Say to the king, my lord, my god, my Sun: Message of the Lady of the Lionesses [Belit-nesheti], your handmaid. May the king, my lord, know that war has been waged in the land, and gone is the land of the king, my lord, by desertion to the Apiru.

Thus the desperate queen of a small city in Palestine writes to Pharaoh Akhenaten, who was the supreme ruler of the region at the time.*

For, around 1350 BCE, there was unrest in Canaan. Canaanite vassal kings conveyed their fears via letters written on clay tablets to the pharaoh in Egypt, requesting military help. Among the 382 tablets from the imperial archive at Amarna (Akhenaten's capital, about midway between Cairo and Luxor), two rare letters stand out -- both letters from a female ruler, Belit-nesheti, whose name means Lady of the Lionesses.

She wrote to pharaoh about the attacks, counterattacks, and the treachery of native rulers of vassal cities who had thrown her own mini-state into danger at this time. She had paid her tribute to Egypt and, now, as the security situation continued to worsen, she wanted help (or, as another petty ruler put it, O my lord, let my lord dispatch the archers and let them come! )

She needed Egyptian soldiers ... and needed them soon. Nearby cities had already fallen, and this, as she warned pharaoh, was no time for dithering,

I beg the king to save his land from the hands of the Apiru, before it is too late.

The Apiru, Who?

The Apiru mentioned in her letters -- and in many others sent by local kings to Akhenaten -- were a (semi)nomadic people who lived on the fringes of Canaanite urban society. In the cutthroat world of mid-century politics, where Egyptian imperial control was minimal, dynastic rivalries and shifting coalitions left cities vulnerable. The Apiru operated as armed bands outside of the settled social structure, freebooting for their own profit or available for hire. Thus, when a rebel prince sought to grab the throne within his own city-state or when one king tried to overthrow or take over the territory of another king, they seemed easily able to raise a mercenary army of Apiru and use those forces to accomplish their own ends. Clearly, the Apiru who were threatening the Lady of the Lionesses must have been backed by dynasts who wanted to seize control of Belit-nesheti's own city.

Where was the queen's city?

The name of her city is not mentioned in her letters. Presumably, pharaoh's scribes would have known her by name -- and that was enough. Luckily, she mentions two Apiru raids that took place in the area, one on Ayyaluna (biblical Aijalon) and the other at Sarha (biblical Zorah). Both settlements are in the eastern territory of Gezer -- just south of the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway in modern Israel, as it happens. In the Late Bronze Age, the city of Gezer controlled large areas in the central coastal plain and the northern lowlands, extending from the Egyptian centre of Jaffa in the northwest to the borders of Ashdod in the south.

Was the Lady of the Lionesses the queen-regent of Gezer, as some historians have assumed? Probably not. She tells pharaoh that two sons of the recently-deceased king of Gezer had barely escaped from the Apiru with their lives -- referring to them in the third person ("they"), rather than the first person ("my sons") as she would if she were their mother. Anyway, it appears that another adult son of the dead king was on his father's throne at this time. So, no queen-regent-in-charge.

Might Belit-nesheti have ruled a neighbouring city?

One Israeli historian, Nadav Na'aman, pointed to Beth Shemesh -- a Late Bronze Age city of about 1,500 souls on the southern border of the Gezer kingdom (some 20 km [13 miles] southwest of Jerusalem) -- as her possible seat. If so, her letters were telling the pharaoh about the dangers facing her own territory. And, given her concern for the two princes of Gezer, that city, at least, must have been an ally rather than a threat.**

In the House of the Sun

The name Beth-Shemesh means "House of the Sun", so the Sun-god was surely the main deity worshipped there by the Canaanite inhabitants (and the nearby Arab village of 'Ain Shems' still preserves the ancient name). Recent excavations at Tel Beth Shemesh, led by Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman of the Institute of Archaeology of Tel Aviv University, may prove that this is, in truth, Belit-nesheti's city.

Figurines and plaques of the Canaanite goddess dressed up as Egyptian Hathor (top left) have been uncovered at the site.

And, just last week, the archaeologists announced an unusual ceramic plaque of a woman in male dress (right and left), suggesting that a mighty female "king" may have ruled the city. The plaque itself depicts a figure dressed as royal male figures (and gods) appeared in Egyptian and Canaanite art, and standing on a basket called a neb -- which signifies a ruler or deity. The figure's hairstyle, though, is womanly and its bent arms are holding lotus flowers -- attributes given to women. If they are right, the plaque would depict the only known female ruler of the region: not a queen-regent but a woman who ruled in her own right. Taken together with the evidence of the two Armarna letters, that can only mean our own Belit-nesheti -- the Lady of the Lionesses.

"Obviously something very different was happening in this city," says Dr Lederman.

"There is no evidence of other females ruling a major city in this capacity," Lederman and Bunimovitz agree. "She is the only one."

He was her king, but he done her wrong

... if my lord does not wish to march forth, then let him send one of his [generals] with troops and chariots.Akhenaten simply refused to apply himself to the task of sending an effective military force into Canaan. Living almost like a recluse in Amarna, the pharaoh had a single fixation -- the Great Living Sun-disc. He was only intermittently interested in foreign policy and the fate of his territorial vassals. So, he never 'marched forth' himself and was just as reluctant to let his army do so. His only irrevocable resolve pertained to his religious program.

Akhenaten did not respond to Belit-nesheti's cries for assistance. The unfulfilled pleas for troops that are so characteristic of the Amarna letters had dire results.

Beth Shemesh was devastated in a wave of violence shortly after 1350 BCE. The ruins of the Late Bronze Age city were discovered in the 2008 archaeological season. Entire walls had collapsed in a massive fire; toppled bricks showed the effects of exposure to the extreme heat of the blaze.

Belit-nesheti and her subjects didn't give up without a fight. Their desperate attempt to defend their city is witnessed by the huge number of bronze arrowheads discovered among the fallen bricks. The capture of Beth Shemesh was apparently preceded by a fierce battle. Belit-nesheti lost that battle. And her people did not even have time to save their belongings. "They left everything in their houses. The site is loaded with finds," said Lederman, adding that the valuable objects found in the destruction level points to Beth-Shemesh as one the most important inland Canaanite cities.

Perhaps Akhenaten did not appreciate the danger or he was ready to risk it. Either way, the troops and chariots never arrived.

This story ain't got no moral this story ain't got no end this story only goes to show that there ain't no good in men

And so the Lady of Lionesses disappeared from history, with just two tantalizing letters written on clay to show she had ever lived.

Until now.

* In the Late Bronze Age, Canaan (Palestine) was an Egyptian province governed by Egyptian administrators and garrison troops stationed in a few centres. In the mid-14th century BCE these centres were Gaza, Jaffa, Ullasa and Sumur on the coast, and Beth-Shean and Kumidi inland.

The Amarna tablets were found at the royal residence built by Akhenaten (Amenophis IV) on a previously uninhabited site in Middle Egypt (Tel Amarna). He called the new capital Akhetaten, 'the horizon of the sun-disc'. The central part of the city was occupied by the main religious and administrative buildings. The archive of diplomatic correspondence between the kings of the Amarna period and rulers of the Levant was found in the records office.** Belit-nesheti's letters are part of the Amarna archives, a collection of letters in the cuneiform script in the Akkadian language (the diplomatic language of the time) and written on clay tablets. Modern science offers a variety of techniques for analysing the origin of objects made of clay, from petrographic analysis to Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA).

Israeli scholars have recently carried out mineralogical and chemical analyses on the +300 Amarna clay tablets now in museums in Berlin, London, Oxford and Paris, in order to pinpoint their geographic origin. Analysis of one of Belit-nesheti's tablets (EA 273) proves it to have been produced in Gezer. Presumably having no local Akkadian scribe, Belit-Nesheti had to have her letters written at neighbouring Gezer -- which can only have happened if she was indeed an ally of that city. There is evidence, too, that the same Gezer scribe travelled to other allied cities where he wrote letters on behalf of their rulers (Y. Goren, I. Finkelstein, N. Na'aman, Inscribed in Clay: Provenance Study of the Amarna Letters, 2004, 276-279).On the Apiru, see Norman Gottwald, The tribes of Yahweh (part VIII).

02 April 2009

Her name means "The Beautiful One who has come" -- but apparently she got a little touch-up help from an Amarna-age beautician.

The most beautiful woman in the world, Nefertiti, was made famous by her painted bust in the Berlin's Egyptian Museum. The bust was made with an inner core of carved limestone, which was first plastered and then richly painted. Flesh tones on the face give the piece amazing life.

Yesterday, the journal Radiology revealed that a CT scan had uncovered a hidden face under the plaster.

It was always thought that that the inner limestone was just a support. Not so.

Using the latest computer tomography (CT) techniques developed for medicine, researchers discovered that the core was, in fact, a highly detailed inner sculpture of the queen. And this limestone face differs in small but significant ways from the external plaster face:

The inner face has less prominent cheekbones, a slight bump on the ridge of the nose, marked wrinkles around the corner of the mouth and cheeks, and less depth at the corners of the eyelids.

A little more seriously, Huppertz suggests "The changes could have been made to make the queen adhere more to the ideals of the time."

Who can help but speculate? And he does: "It is possible that the bust of Nefertiti was probably commissioned (by King Akhenaten himself ) to represent her according to his personal perception."

What husband wouldn't want that, when he's paying for a portrait of His Great Royal Wife?

Possessed of Charm, Exuding Happiness, Mistress of Sweetness, beloved one, soothing the king's heart in his house, soft-spoken in all, Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt, Great King's Wife, whom he loves, Lady of the Two Lands, Nefertiti.

A Sculptor's Model?

The bust of Queen Nefertiti was found inside the Amarna workshop of the royal sculptor, who described himself as The King's Favourite and Master of Works, the Sculptor, Thutmose.

It was excavated by the German archaeologist Ludwig Borchardt in 1912.* Entries in his diaries show that he was beside himself with excitement when he unearthed his find. "Suddenly we have the most alive Egyptian artwork in our hands," he wrote. "You cannot describe it with words. You can only see it."

He assumed that the sculptor would have taken an original plaster mask of the queen's face and used it as a model for the bust.

Well, maybe.

Nefertiti seems to incarnate an ideal of beauty which we share. But has everyone suddenly forgotten that this is not a finished piece? And perhaps was never meant to be finished? Like many other plaster portrait heads found in Thutmose's studio (as the four here), it shows a keen interest in the individual traits of the living face -- at least in the unfinished state. So, the iconic bust of Nefertiti may well be a sculptor's model -- a piece meant for study and to be copied by apprentices (see now update below).

If Thutmose really took a plaster cast from the queen's own face, it is doubtful (to put it mildly) that he meant to turn that treasure into ... plaster.

Pharaohs didn't do plaster.

At best, this is the starting point for a major piece, not the end result.

The sculptor was surely not prettying up plaster for her husband.

Besides, Akhenaten seems not to have minded wrinkles.

Here she is praying to the sun. Wrinkles are the least of her worries -- pictured, as she is, with an oversized ear, protruding chin, and a thin, stretched neck.

An UppityWoman

Nefertiti was often depicted on temple walls the same size as the king, signifying her importance. She is shown conducting rituals and worshipping the sun-disk Aten -- a role hitherto reserved for the pharaoh, and yet Nefertiti is seen doing the same. The king as a god himself, as well as the high priest, had always been the only person allowed to communicate with his fellow deities. This changed dramatically after Hatshepsut and when Nefertiti started to address the gods in her own right.

Whether or not she was ever elevated to the status of co-regent, there is much evidence that Nefertiti enjoyed unprecedented power, perhaps equal in status to the king himself.

Not a frail woman

Most impressively, she is shown on a relief from the temple at Amarna (left), smiting a foreign enemy with a mace under the rays of the Aten. Even if her victim is also female, she shares with Akhenaten the serious business of smiting Egypt's enemies. A second stela shows her driving a chariot, another activity normally associated only with the king.

Frailty, thy name is not Nefertiti.

Nor is she a modern cover girl. The Berlin Museum has recently installed a new lighting arrangement for the famous bust. It reveals fine wrinkles and slight bags under the queen’s eyes and on her neck.

Will we ever stop imposing our standards of female beauty on the past?

And now I hope that Egyptology will quit producing so many good stories for a bit. It's more than time that I get back to Zenobia and the 3rd-century C.E.

Update 4 April 2009: New Evidence of the sculpture as a working model.

Having now read the full CT report (again, thanks to Aayko Eyma), one of many interesting observations is the fact that Nefertiti's missing left eye was not, as has been thought, a result either of its long burial or an excavation mishap, but was never put in its socket. The lens of the right eye is a rock crystal inlay (2 mm thick) with a pupil made of black-coloured wax. The left eye, on the other hand, seemed to have never been filled with an inlay and contained no lens and no pupil.

The authors surmise that this was a deliberate omission and shows that the bust was probably just a working model at the time of its creation, serving as a copy model. Thus, the royal sculptor Thutmose may have used it to demonstrate to his apprentices how to make the hollow in which the eye would be set in the carved stone.

* The Egyptian government wants the bust back, claiming that it was deceptively disguised when the finds were divided between the archaeological authorities and Germany in 1913. The Independent story briefly covers this dispute. More at Spiegel Online.

My thanks to Aayko Eyma of EEF-Day (30-31 March 2009) for this 'Breaking News' on the CT scans.

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About Me

I studied Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford (M.Litt.) and am a member of the British School at Athens. I excavated for many years on Crete and on the Greek mainland and travelled extensively in the Middle East. I have lived and worked among the ruins of the three great Caravan Cities: Petra, Palmyra, and Baalbek. It was at Palmyra in Syria that I began to tell the story of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, and the rebellion that she led against imperial Rome. I was living within the grounds of the Temple of Bel, and at night, when the great gates of the temple were shut, I came closer to the spirit of the time and place than probably anyone has ever done before. I know that I felt very close to Zenobia, which made the book a joy for me to write.

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These are five blogs I enjoy reading the most, and without which life would be less interesting for me: David Meadows' Rogue Classicism is my number one go-to blog.... My second choice is Judith Weingarten's Zenobia - she covers strong ancient women, not just Zenobia, and since these warrior women are the subject of my next book, I love her lengthy well-researched posts. PHDiva"Judith Weingarten, author of The Chronicle of Zenobia: The Rebel Queen writes about gods, kings, war and chivalry here. Written with pace and verve it is a fantastic and exciting analysis."Mike @ Official Osprey Publishing Blog

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"Judith's blog, Zenobia: Empress of the East is a treasure trove of insights into early history, but also the explorers, scholars and archaeologists who uncovered the ancient world."Martin@The Lay Scientist